Gender Equality in XPrag.de

Advances in Experimental Pragmatics will be facilitated if the most talented researchers can enter and continue to work in the field without having to compromise their personal goals. However, we all are aware of the discrepancies between the gender distribution among students enrolled in linguistics and psychology and the gender distribution in later career stages. XPrag.de seeks to ensure that talented female researchers can also achieve their full scientific potential.

Gender Equality Measures by XPrag.de

The Women Mentoring Program pairs up early-career female researchers with an experienced female XPrag.de principal investigator in a different XPrag.de project. The program funds travel expenses (including one night’s stay) for visiting the mentor at least once a year.

The Emergency Childcare Program provides childcare outside of the usual hours of daycare or to sick children for all researchers with children involved in XPrag.de. Researchers need such emergency care in the evening hours to attend evening lectures, or on the weekend for conference travel. This program also funds travel costs of children accompanying their parent to a conference as well as travel costs of an acquainted care taker if necessary.

XPrag.de provides daycare at all XPrag.de funded events.

Funding of research assistants to realize more flexible working conditions: Once a year, post-doc researchers or PIs in XPrag.de can apply for funds to cover personnel costs up to 2500€ to hire a student or research assistant who either
a) supports your daily work or
b) supports you during your parental leave.
The current call with a detailed description of the measure is available here.

Funding of a so-called “Belegplatz”. That means: If a company cannot afford to operate an own childcare institution, it can contribute to a pot of money at some local child care provider, who put the fees of different contributors together and is then able to hire additional staff and, therefore able to provide more childcare spots especially for children of the members of the contributing employers.

Outstanding gender facts about XPrag.de

XPrag.de is the first priority program in the history of the German Research Foundation (DFG) in which the majority of principal investigators are women. Among the 16 participating scientific projects only 4 are headed exclusively by men whereas 5 projects are headed exclusively by women and 7 are headed by a mixed team of female and male principal investigators. Overall, 52% of principal investigators are women.

In XPrag.de there are 8 female post-docs and 2 male post-doc researchers. Approximately the same ratio holds for PhD students: 10 female and 2 male students are doing research for their doctoral thesis in an XPrag.de project.

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Adding up all researchers involved in XPrag.de, 65% are women!XPrag.de has a strong interest to support female researchers achieving their full scientific potential.